Congresspedia

Information about Conor Kenny and CongressPedia

Conor Kenny is the editor of the Congresspedia.org, a new collaborative citizen journalism project to build the "citizens' encyclopedia on Congress." Congresspedia provides access to powerful databases of information on subjects like campaign contributions and voting records as well as providing a wiki-style profile of each member of Congress that anyone can edit. The goal of Congresspedia is to provide the tools citizen journalists need to research members of Congress and then a place to post the results of that research. Congresspedia is different than Wikipedia in that every addition must be referenced to an exterior source (like a newspaper article) and paid editors are employed to check submissions for accuracy and appropriateness.

Beyond providing a repository for citizen journalism, Congresspedia is meant to be a resource for citizens and professional journalists in their own efforts to find out more about Congress. Congresspedia has a distinct advantage over newspapers and blogs in that there is no "memory hole effect" of stories disappearing into archives - every piece of information submitted becomes part of each senator or representative's permanent profile. There are currently articles on every sitting member of Congress, convicted ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Congress-wide scandals, pieces of legislation and committees with more being added every day.